Europeans are going to wish they'd kept their guns about the time their Islamist populations reach about 30%........multi-culturalism is a great idea, until you get a significant minority population that doesn't share your view of a multi-cultural world, and finally gains the numbers to flex their muscle. Then it becomes cold hard reality that, perhaps, a little xenophobia might be healthy thing......Kind of like a cultural immune system.

May 24, 2013 6:00 PMTo the Slaughter British lions come up lambs in Woolwich.

By Mark Steyn

Michael Adebolajo speaks to horrified onlookers after the attack.

On Wednesday, Drummer Lee Rigby of the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, a man who had served Queen and country honorably in the hell of Helmand Province in Afghanistan, emerged from his barracks on Wellington Street, named after the Duke thereof, in southeast London. Minutes later, he was hacked to death in broad daylight and in full view of onlookers by two men with machetes who crowed “Allahu akbar!” as they dumped his carcass in the middle of the street like so much road kill.

As grotesque as this act of savagery was, the aftermath was even more unsettling. The perpetrators did not, as the Tsarnaev brothers did in Boston, attempt to escape. Instead, they held court in the street gloating over their trophy, and flagged down a London bus to demand the passengers record their triumph on film. As the crowd of bystanders swelled, the remarkably urbane savages posed for photographs with the remains of their victim while discoursing on the iniquities of Britain toward the Muslim world. Having killed Drummer Rigby, they were killing time: It took 20 minutes for the somnolent British constabulary to show up. And so television viewers were treated to the spectacle of a young man, speaking in the vowels of south London, chatting calmly with his “fellow Britons” about his geopolitical grievances and apologizing to the ladies present for any discomfort his beheading of Drummer Rigby might have caused them, all while drenched in blood and still wielding his cleaver.

If you’re thinking of getting steamed over all that, don’t. Simon Jenkins, the former editor of the Times of London, cautioned against “mass hysteria” over “mundane acts of violence.” That’s easy for him to say. Woolwich is an unfashionable part of town, and Sir Simon is unlikely to find himself there of an afternoon stroll. Drummer Rigby had less choice in the matter. Being jumped by barbarians with machetes is certainly “mundane” in Somalia and Sudan, but it’s the sort of thing that would once have been considered somewhat unusual on a sunny afternoon in south London — at least as unusual as, say, blowing up eight-year-old boys at the Boston Marathon. It was “mundane” only in the sense that, as at weddings and kindergarten concerts, the reflexive reaction of everybody present was to get out their cell phones and start filming.

Once, long ago, I was in an altercation where someone pulled a switchblade, and ever since have been mindful of Jimmy Hoffa’s observation that he’d rather jump a gun than a knife. Nevertheless, there is a disturbing passivity to this scene: a street full of able-bodied citizens being lectured to by blood-soaked murderers who have no fear that anyone will be minded to interrupt their diatribes. In fairness to the people of Boston, they were ordered to “shelter in place” by the governor of Massachusetts. In Woolwich, a large crowd of Londoners apparently volunteered to “shelter in place,” instinctively. Consider how that will play when these guys’ jihadist snuff video is being hawked around the bazaars of the Muslim world. Behold the infidels, content to be bystanders in their own fate.

This passivity set the tone for what followed. In London as in Boston, the politico-media class immediately lapsed into the pneumatic multiculti Tourette’s that seems to be a chronic side effect of excess diversity-celebrating: No Islam to see here, nothing to do with Islam, all these body parts in the street are a deplorable misinterpretation of Islam. The BBC’s Nick Robinson accidentally described the men as being “of Muslim appearance,” but quickly walked it back lest impressionable types get the idea that there’s anything “of Muslim appearance” about a guy waving a machete and saying “Allahu akbar.” A man is on TV dripping blood in front of a dead British soldier and swearing “by Almighty Allah we will never stop fighting you,” yet it’s the BBC reporter who’s apologizing for “causing offence.” To David Cameron, Drummer Rigby’s horrific end was “not just an attack on Britain and on the British way of life, it was also a betrayal of Islam. . . . There is nothing in Islam that justifies this truly dreadful act.”

How does he know? He doesn’t seem the most likely Koranic scholar. Appearing on David Letterman’s show a while back, Cameron was unable to translate into English the words “Magna Carta,” which has quite a bit to do with that “British way of life” he’s so keen on. But apparently it’s because he’s been up to his neck in suras and hadiths every night sweating for Sharia 101. So has Scotland Yard’s deputy assistant commissioner, Brian Paddick, who reassured us after the London Tube bombings that “Islam and terrorism don’t go together,” and the mayor of Toronto, David Miller, telling NPR listeners after 19 Muslims were arrested for plotting to behead the Canadian prime minister: “You know, in Islam, if you kill one person you kill everybody,” he said in a somewhat loose paraphrase of Koran 5:32 that manages to leave out some important loopholes. “It’s a very peaceful religion.”

That’s why it fits so harmoniously into famously peaceful societies like, say, Sweden. For the last week Stockholm has been ablaze every night with hundreds of burning cars set alight by “youths.” Any particular kind of “youth”? The Swedish prime minister declined to identify them any more precisely than as “hooligans.” But don’t worry: The “hooligans” and “youths” and men of no Muslim appearance whatsoever can never win because, as David Cameron ringingly declared, “they can never beat the values we hold dear, the belief in freedom, in democracy, in free speech, in our British values, Western values.” Actually, they’ve already gone quite a way toward eroding free speech, as both prime ministers demonstrate. The short version of what happened in Woolwich is that two Muslims butchered a British soldier in the name of Islam and helpfully explained, “The only reason we have done this is because Muslims are dying every day.” But what do they know? They’re only Muslims, not Diversity Outreach Coordinators. So the BBC, in its so-called “Key Points,” declined to mention the “Allahu akbar” bit or the “I”-word at all: Allah who? Not a lot of Muslims want to go to the trouble of chopping your head off, but when so many Western leaders have so little rattling around up there, they don’t have to. And, as we know from the sob-sister Tsarnaev profiles, most of these excitable lads are perfectly affable, or at least no more than mildly alienated, until the day they set a hundred cars alight, or blow up a school boy, or decapitate some guy. And, if you’re lucky, it’s not you they behead, or your kid they kill, or even your Honda Civic they light up. And so life goes on, and it’s all so “mundane,” in Simon Jenkins’s word, that you barely notice when the Jewish school shuts up, and the gay bar, and the uncovered women no longer take a stroll too late in the day, and the publishing house that gets sent the manuscript for the next Satanic Verses decides it’s not worth the trouble. . . . But don’t worry, they’ll never defeat our “free speech” and our “way of life.”

One in ten Britons under 25 is now Muslim. That number will increase, through immigration, disparate birth rates, and conversions like those of the Woolwich killers, British-born and -bred. Metternich liked to say the Balkans began in the Landstrasse, in southeast Vienna. Today, the Dar al-Islam begins in Wellington Street, in southeast London. That’s a “betrayal” all right, but not of Islam.

Students threatening teachers. Teachers threatening students. Corruption in the classrooms, the hallways, and, eventually, becoming a national scandal – all part of daily life at an Islamic high school in Rotterdam. There, according to a recent article in Dutch daily NRC Handelsblad, non-Muslim teachers are pressured to pass failing Muslim students, while Muslim teachers hold secretive classes instructing their pupils on the evils of European culture.

And that's only part of the story.

The Ibn Ghaldoun school has a long history of controversy, but returned recently to the spotlight after it was discovered that a group of its students had stolen copies of the national final exam, administered to all Dutch students, and were selling it over the Internet. Dozens were found to have cheated, including at least one young woman who, having researched the answers, spoke them into her smartphone and played the recording during test-taking, hiding the headphones under her hijab. The result: the tests had to be repeated, even by those who had not seen them in advance – and so students around the country whose families had planned to take their summer holidays were, in many cases, forced to forfeit flights and other travel arrangements (often at substantial cost).

Investigations into the theft have revealed deep-rooted corruption and revisited previous dirty dealings at the Islamic school, the only Islamic secondary school in the country. In 2007, for instance, Ibn Ghaldoun's directors were found to have used over €200,000 in government subsidies earmarked for books and local educational school outings to take 200 students and their families not, say, to the Rijksmuseum or Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, but to Mecca. To make matters worse, school administrators then created false receipts and invoices to cover up the misallocation of funds.

Other money also appears to have been paid that same year to local imams not officially affiliated with the school, including the radical Khalil El Moumni, known, among other things, for regularly characterizing homosexuals as being "worse than pigs."

In this latest scandal, the school has come under its most intense scrutiny yet. And the findings suggest that problems with Holland's Muslim population are far more complex – and potentially serious – than has been recognized to date.

It isn't only that several hundred of Rotterdam's Muslim youth attend a school where lying and stealing is evidently the norm for the administration, creating an environment in which the basic values and principles of Western law and social values are dismissed and disregarded; and it isn't only that the role model this establishes for these children is one that not only ignores Dutch law, but defies it. What is worse is that such lessons, according to the NRC Handelsblad, are actually taught directly: in a discussion with seven non-Muslim teachers from the school (all of whom claim to have taken jobs there in the hope of improving chances for underprivileged Muslim youth), reporter Andreas Kouwenhoven discovered that after-school "study groups" prove not to be study groups at all. Rather, one Ibn Ghaldoun teacher told him, "they were classes aimed at indoctrinating the children. The lessons were directed against Dutch culture: Girls should never marry a Dutch boy or a non-believer [non-Muslim]."

Others told the NRC that parents frequently participated in the culture of lies prevalent at the school, regularly pressuring them to raise a child's grade or even to pass a failing student. Equally distressing, however, is the fact that some teachers actually capitulated. Some cited threats (one claimed his car was vandalized when he refused to raise one student's grade). Others who admitted inflating grades and secretly giving pupils second- and third chances felt that Dutch-Muslim children experience particular difficulty navigating Dutch society and so, deserve some latitude – this even when many Ibn Ghaldoun's students were born and raised in the Netherlands. Not only have students who should have failed been allowed to pass, but even those who rightfully should have flunked out completely have received diplomas. (Ibn Ghaldoum's director, Ayhan Tonca, did not respond to requests for comment for this column.)

The consequences of all this are significant. The unemployment rate among the Dutch Muslim population, particularly among Moroccans, is 15 percent, versus 8 percent of non-Muslims. Far more live in poverty. These facts are frequently cited as reasons for the high rate of criminality in the Muslim (and especially Moroccan) community, and as proof that Muslims are discriminated against by non-Muslim employers. But the situation at the school suggests that the problems lie deeper, in a systemic, cultural approach to maneuvering through life and handling an adverse situation: the lying, the cheating, the threats.

(As for allegations of discrimination in the job market, one can't help but wonder: the fact that two kids graduate with a certain grade point average may make them appear equal as job candidates; but if one of them received that diploma despite the fact that he cannot write a coherent job solicitation letter, then there's likely more than just ethnicity involved.)

What's more, failure to assimilate appears to come, then, not from discrimination or difficulties in adapting per se, but as a deliberate strategy promoted not just be radical imams in the mosques, but by the schools.

Granted, Ibn Ghaldoun is but one of many Islamic schools in the country (though it is, significantly, the only Islamic high school). But it is by far not the only one that expressly teaches students to oppose Dutch norms or resist Westernization; in fact, a 2008 report showed that a full 86 percent had defrauded the government of a total of over €2 million, while more recent government reports have shown that 30 percent of Islamic schools in the Netherlands have ties to Hamas and/or the Muslim Brotherhood.

That may explain the rise in extremism in the country in recent years, and the growing flow of Dutch Muslims to join the jihad in Syria – trends that have caused Dutch officials to raise the terror alert to its next-to-highest level.

This is not to argue against the existence of Muslim schools in principle, any more than against the presence of, say, Yeshivas. But if this is the kind of Islam Ibn Ghaldoun and similar such schools are teaching, then not only Holland, but all of Europe – and the West would be far better off without them. The time, in any case, has come to stop mollycoddling these children, and to stop making excuses for their behavior. The West must at last demand that its Muslim children be part of our cultural and moral fabric – starting in the classroom.

Abigail R. Esman, the author, most recently, of Radical State: How Jihad Is Winning Over Democracy in the West (Praeger, 2010), is a freelance writer based in New York and the Netherlands.

The completion of a new mosque in Amsterdam is doing more than opening the doors of worship to Dutch Muslims; it is opening new windows into unexpected avenues of terrorist financing and funding for the growth of radical Islam in the West.

For years, Western counterterrorism officials and pundits have expressed concern about the sponsorship of European and American mosques, Islamic schools, and other Muslim organizations by the Saudi government in efforts to its own extremist version of Islam, Wahhabism. Wahhabis adhere to strict, literal interpretations of the Quran and defend the use of violence against those who do not – Muslims and non-Muslims alike.

Now, however, it seems we've been so focused on the Saudis, we may have missed a potentially even greater source of radicalization, and certainly a fast-growing one: the Muslim Brotherhood. And the government of Kuwait, with ties to al-Qaida groups and Hamas, appears to be among the largest financiers of Brotherhood infiltration into Europe.This is where the Amsterdam mosque comes in. Located in the largely Muslim neighborhood of Sloterdijk, the Blue Mosque has been the subject of controversy in the Dutch press since its conception. A report that the government of Kuwait was paying salaries to its imam and other officers recently propelled the mosque – and its organization – into the headlines. Those reports have since been challenged, but the gist of them remains true: through a pan-European organization called the Europe Trust, Kuwait is tying Dutch and other European Muslims directly into the Muslim Brotherhood via complex financial, non-profit and religious networks that stretch from Spain to Ireland – and across the Atlantic to New York.

Based in the UK, the Europe Trust is funded largely by Kuwait (with help from the UAE-based Makhtoum Foundation, about which, more later), and, according to the Middle East Quarterly, "channels money from the Persian Gulf to groups sympathetic to the Brotherhood in Europe, primarily to build mosques." Indeed, the Blue Mosque was funded entirely by Kuwait, working through the offices of the Europe Trust Nederland (ETN). Others have tied the Europe Trust to the Brotherhood as well; but particularly notable is the fact that the Trust is led by Ahmed Al-Rawi, a UK-based Muslim Brotherhood leader, and Nooh al Kaddo, a Dublin-based Iraqi who runs the Islamic Cultural Center of Ireland (ICCI), well known as a Brotherhood institution. The ICCI also houses the European Council of Fatwa and Research, whose director, the Egyptian cleric Yusuf al Qaradawi, has reportedly "defended suicide bombing and advocated the death sentence for homosexuals, according to the Irish Independent. (Kaddo, for his part, defends Qaradawi, describing his views in the Independent as "representative of Islamic teachings and not assumed to be a violation of same.")

But here's what else: al-Kaddo, who serves as a trustee of the Hamas-linked charity, Human Appeal International, also directs the largest mosque in Western Europe: the Al Salam mosque in Rotterdam, a controversial monument whose 50-meter high minarets form the highest point in the city. And like the ICCI, Al Salam (also known as Essalam) was financed entirely by Hamdan ben Rashid Al-Makhtoum, deputy ruler of Dubai and (conveniently) UAE Minister of Finance. Makhtoum, as it happens, also is a generous donor to Hamas-linked CAIR in the U.S. (The Sheik has also provided funds for other European mosques.)

Thirty-five miles away, Amsterdam's Blue Mosque also has al-Kaddo to thank for his efforts to secure the money that built it – an achievement made possible in part through his affiliation with Yahia Bouyafa, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood in the Netherlands and director (among other things) of the Federation of Islamic Organizations in the Netherlands (FION). FION, in turn, is a member of the Federation of Islamic Organizations in Europe (FIOE) – which the Global Muslim Brotherhood Daily Report identifies as a Brotherhood umbrella group that also embraces al-Kaddo's Europe Trust – and thus the Al Salam mosque in Rotterdam.

All in the same web. But there's more.

According to a fact sheet published by the Blue Mosque itself, a partnership developed early in the planning stages placed the ETN and FION – or al-Kaddo and Bouyafa – in charge of raising funds for the building. Bouyafa approached Kuwait's Ministry of Religious Affairs. But when his proposal was rejected, another local imam, Yassin Elforkani – suspected of ties to the Brotherhood – was called in to take over. With a few clever alterations to the construction and financing plan, Elforkani convinced Kuwait to provide the needed €2 million.

But with Kuwait now owning the building, sponsoring the ETN, and with extensive ties to Kaddo and Bouyafa (who has regularly exchanged places with Elforkani as director of FION and of the mosque board), the next step was inevitable: the appointment of Kuwaiti Minister for Religious Affairs (Awaqf) Mutlaq al-Qarawi, as chairman of the European Trust Nederland.

This means that one of the most active Muslim organizations in the Netherlands is now led not by a Dutch citizen, not even by a Dutch-speaking foreign imam, but by the government of Kuwait. More specifically, the Trust now sits in the hands of the Kuwaiti Ministry of Religious Affairs, which takes as its mandate spread of Islam to nonbelievers (dawah).

The Europe Trust has also not limited itself to Northern Europe: the NEFA Foundation has tied the group to properties in France, Greece, Romania, and Germany, where, NEFA notes, "funds for real estate purchased […] on behalf of a German Islamic association also came from the Makhtoum Foundation as well as the Awaqf Ministry [Ministry of Religious Affairs] in Kuwait and the Bayt al-Zakat in Dubai."

If all this sounds remote for Americans, too far across the oceans to matter very much, think again. According to a 2003 statement from former National Security and Counter-terrorism Coordinator Richard Clarke before the U.S. Senate Banking Committee, "several Al Qida operatives have allegedly been associated with the Kuwaiti Muslim Brotherhood," including 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Ramsi Yousef, a key figure in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center.

What's more, Clarke testified, "The Kuwaiti government allegedly provides substantial funding to charities controlled by the Kuwait Muslim Brotherhood, such as Lajnat al-Dawa. The U.S. Department of Treasury and the United Nations Security Council designated Lajnat al-Dawa on January 9, 2003 as a supporter of Al Qida. Lajnat al-Dawa and its affiliates had offices in the U.S. in Michigan, Colorado, and Northern Virginia."

If that's not enough, cables published by Wikileaks regarding the problems of policing money flowing to terrorist groups are even more damning. The New York Times summed up a series of these cables, which described Kuwait, the only Gulf country where terrorist funding has not been criminalized, as "a key transit point."

Other ties have been suggested between U.S. mosques and the Brotherhood, most notably the renowned Islamic Cultural Center in New York, founded by Egyptian-born Muhammad Abdul Rauf – father of former Ground Zero Mosque/Park51 imam Faisal Rauf – and funded in large measure by the Kuwaiti government.

Meanwhile, al-Kaddo, with continuing support from the Muslim Brotherhood in Kuwait, is gathering funds for even more mosques throughout Europe. While the ETN, he insists, does not define the positions of those mosques, it does use its power to hire, appoint, and fire each mosque's officers and imams – all carefully selected from an inside Brotherhood group – and many of whom have ties to Hamas or al-Qaida.

With Europe now becoming one of the richest resources for Islamic jihad, and with the free ability of its citizens to travel visa-free to the United States, the threat a growing, radicalized European Brotherhood network poses is a lot closer than it seems.

Abigail R. Esman, the author, most recently, of Radical State: How Jihad Is Winning Over Democracy in the West (Praeger, 2010), is a freelance writer based in New York and the Netherlands.

I posted a few years back how Sweden's third largest city is Malmö with the highest percentage of Muslims in Scandinavia was unable to allow any spectators in to see Sweden host Israel in a Davis Cup (tennis) match because of the violence. Here is a riot video Malmo 'welcoming' their international guests from Israel. This is a must-see if your view of Scandinavia or western Europe is outdated.

...In 2010 the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, which represents Jewish interests abroad, issued a travel warning for Malmö urging “extreme caution.” A year later a Hollywood film company scrapped plans to shoot a Jewish themed movie in the city because of concerns about anti-Semitism there. Last year the Wiesenthal Centre said “they see no reason to relax or revoke” their travel warning to Jews considering a visit to southern Sweden. A few months afterwards the Jewish community centre was attacked in a bomb blast.

...the sole Jewish kindergarten is protected with bullet-proof doors after the bomb attack last year.

...The idea was to go about my normal day and also visit places which a potential tourist may go to, albeit with one major difference - the kippah clipped to the back of my head. My intention was not to take the biggest risk possible by venturing into a suburb like Kroksbäck where a Gambian national was recently assaulted along with his young son and nearly thrown off a bridge in a racially motivated crime. Besides, Kroksbäck along with say Rosengård are not exactly tourist hotspots. ...----Story at the link. Editor's Note: Some names have been changed in order to protect identities.

The original tale may be apocryphal, but the story of the silver spoon has saved the lives of hundreds of British Muslim girls being forced into marriage by their parents. "Put a spoon in your knickers," a counselor at the British organization Karma Nirvana told a young girl being sent abroad to wed against her will. Karma Nirvana attends to the needs of girls being threatened with forced marriage, many of whom are under the age of 17.The idea behind the plot was simple, but ingenious: the spoon would set off alarms at airport security, whereupon the unwilling bride-to-be could explain her situation to a law enforcement officer who could then intervene to protect her.The ploy evidently worked, and has been adopted since by other young women in the UK, most of them British-born, who are sent to their parents' original homes and villages in Pakistan, Bangladesh, and elsewhere to marry first cousins they have never met, conscribed to a life of servitude and worse.It's a trick more and more girls seem to need. According to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), Britain's Forced Marriage Unit took in 1,485 such cases in 2012. And that's just a drop in the proverbial bucket: Britain's Chief Prosecutor Nazir Afzal told the ABC, "There are probably between 8,000 to 10,000 forced marriages or threats of forced marriage in the UK every year." Even more shocking, according to the FMU, of those, nearly 1,500, or "thirteen percent involved victims below 15 years [and] 22 percent involved victims aged 16-17." One victim was merely two years old; another, at the other end of the spectrum, was 71.Almost half of these cases involve Pakistani families, many of whom reportedly take advantage of dual nationality rights so that British officials cannot intervene once the girl is on Pakistani soil, the BBC reported. Getting her there, however, is often the problem – one which generally involves either violence (a girl is beaten and locked into her room until she agrees to marry) or deceit (frequently, a girl will be told she will be attending a wedding in Pakistan during her summer holiday; only when she arrives does she learn that the wedding is her own). Because parents so often will use the summer school holidays to spirit their daughters away, officials have begun sending out alerts for airline officials to be on the lookout for young girls traveling to Southern Asia, the Middle East and North Africa. Teachers are also being asked to watch for girls who do not return to school in the fall.Other measures are also beginning to be put in place in the UK, including a law to criminalize forced marriages. And as Phyllis Chesler, an American scholar who writes frequently on the subject, told me, "The Special Prosecutor of honor-based crimes now has the power to return such girls if they can be found and say they are willing to be re-patriated."But for now, the issue remains, and women and girls continue to be married off against their will to men they've never met, who usually do not share their values, mores, or world view.Forced marriage, it should be noted, is not the same as an arranged marriage, in which bride and groom are both willing participants in a union organized by their parents. In forced marriages, one or both are unwilling; and girls particularly who refuse are often subjected to unspeakable violence, which at times has been known to end in an honor killing.When they do submit, their "marriages" more often than not involve abusive husbands, in-laws who expect them to act as servants, and rape. Many become pregnant before they even turn 15, as was the case with one British-Pakistani girl, whose marriage a British judge recently refused to dissolve, citing legal restrictions.Yet while many argue that these arrangements, like arranged marriages, occur in many cultures and across religions, statistics show another story, particularly in the West, where the vast majority of forced marriages occur in Muslim families. Almost all the UK victims, for instance, are Muslim along with some Sikhs, coming not just from Pakistan, but also from Bangladesh, India, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, and Somalia.For years, such marriages were organized in large part to bring the grooms and their families to the West, says Sameem Ali, author of Belonging, a memoir of her own forced marriage. And according to ABC, "Sometimes girls do not return to Britain until they are pregnant, the theory being that this may assist the process by which the husband seeks residency in the United Kingdom."But as the immigrant population grows, more and more forced marriages are even taking place in British mosques – despite British laws prohibiting marriage below the age of 16. Soeren Kern, an analyst with the Gatestone Institute, recently described a situation in which one Muslim cleric, officiating at the forced marriage of a 14-year-old, declared, "She's 14. By Sharia, grace of God, she's legal to get married. Obviously Islam has made it easy for us. There is nothing against that. We're doing it because it's okay through Islam."But if the problem lies within the immigrant community, Ali also blames the British, and specifically, the multiculturalists who, she says, are "afraid to tread on the toes" of the Muslim community. "I keep seeing professionals who say 'it's a cultural issue, why are we imposing our cultural values on this community?'" she tells me. "But that young girl is being forced into marriage, and that young girl needs help." Rather than focus on the religious or cultural aspect of these marriages, says Ali, "they should be attacking it for what it is: a child abuse issue."But isn't it also a cultural or religious one?

Sameem AliAli is adamant that this should not matter to the authorities. "It's for me, for those in the community, to worry about the culture," she says. "Everyone keeps using that as an excuse, that they don't want to be seen as treading on the toes of the Muslims. But why not? If the community didn't want to pick up Western values, then why have they moved to a Western country? The people of this country need to start asking that question."That they don't, she believes, explains why both forced marriages and honor killings, also rampant in the British Muslim community, continue almost 30 years after her own grim experience. "If people had asked the right questions then, we wouldn't have the term 'honor killing' on everyone's lips now. We wouldn't have gotten to the point where everyone knows what that is," she says. "Too many Muslims use Islam as a way of putting people back into the Stone Age. It doesn't help when Western people use my religion to do the same."

It’s easy to slam all the nonsense about Islamic extremism as willful denial and the notion that Islamism is something separate from Islam, rather than the political implementation of Islam through Islamization, as delusional.

But this is potentially a quite important step. For the first time, a major Western country is moving to criminalize a variant of Islam. And that’s an interesting precedent.

The UK is separating a part of Islam (based on specific characteristics, e.g. a worldwide Islamic state, approval of violence) that the religion shares as a whole. And it’s doing this by classifying it as a political ideology… rather than a religion.

That’s a good thing. Yes, this isn’t an actual ban. But it is a declaration that it is unwelcome and is to be treated the way that “right-wing extremists” like the EDL are. That is going to have plenty of invisible consequences especially on the policing level. Assuming that it’s truly implemented.

The UK isn’t going to suddenly go full Angola. Even Angola isn’t going full Angola. But these represent three important steps

1. Classifying a form of Islam as an ideology rather than a religion

2. Taking legal steps to move it out of the public square

3. Making that classification based on characteristics that Islam overall shares

That’s a base for something much bigger.

It would be premature to make too much of this right now. Cameron is worried about his political prospects and European leaders have a tendency to talk big going into elections before scampering away… but this does look like it was workshopped through the bureaucracy. That means it may actually turn into policy.

The British government said Wednesday it needs new powers to help combat the spread of violent extremist Islam, including administrative authority to ban groups and restrict the movement and behavior of alleged recruiters.

A special task force of senior ministers set up by Prime Minister David Cameron reported Wednesday, recommending new quasi-judicial authorities and defining Islamic extremism as “a distinct ideology that should not be confused with traditional [Muslim] religious practice,” according to a statement from Mr. Cameron’s office.

The report also recommends the government work with Internet providers in Britain to get them to block access to sites based abroad that carry material “illegal under U.K. law.”

The new powers recommended for use against extremist recruiters would be similar to the controversial “anti-social behavior orders” introduced in 1998. Such orders are imposed by local magistrates on hooligans and other reckless youths — banning them from being in places like malls or parks, associating with certain people and exhibiting behaviors like swearing or playing loud music.

Anti-social behavior orders can be imposed “on the balance of the evidence.” By contrast, criminal sanctions can be imposed only after conviction “beyond a reasonable doubt.”

That last part is rather important. It makes it possible for the authorities to begin harassing people because everyone knows what they’re up to.

The move is part of a sweeping package of measures drawn up by an anti-extremism task force set up by David Cameron after the death of Drummer Lee Rigby in Woolwich.

In its initial report to be detailed to Parliament today, the task force will also propose new internet filters to block extremist websites and extended powers for watchdogs to shut down charities suspected of being fronts for extremist groups.

‘I want to see an end to hate preaching in Britain,’ the Prime Minister said.

As well as new civil orders against extremists – dubbed ‘Tebos’, or terror and extremism behaviour orders – the Government is to consider the case for another new type of order to ban groups which ‘seek to undermine democracy or use hate speech, when necessary to protect the public or prevent crime and disorder’.

Both types of order are to be based on a new definition of extremism which specifically includes a ‘distorted interpretation of Islam’.

It identifies Islamist extremism as a distinct ideology which should not be confused with traditional religious practice. This ‘distorted’ view argues for a global Islamic state and against ‘liberal values such as democracy, the rule of law and equality’, and tells people they cannot be both Muslim and British.

This “distorted view” just happens to be Islam. And if the UK government just blindly classified Islam as a political ideology to be repressed… that puts him on the same line as Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

Cameron made the announcement in China, which like Russia, has government clergy and clergy not sanctioned by the government who are subject to all sorts of government sanctions. Europe is slowly drifting toward that solution. It’s not a real solution since it does not address the demographic issues, something China can afford to ignore, but it’s a potentially important step.

The task force includes Home Secretary Theresa May, Deputy Premier Nick Clegg, Minister for Faith Baroness Warsi, and has taken advice from police and intelligence chiefs.

Clegg is well on the left and Warsi is a Muslim and has some suspicious ties. So I would like to see how this is actually implemented, but there is potential here.

At around 3:50 pm on Saturday, May 24, a man dressed in a blue sweater and baseball cap walked casually into the Jewish Museum in Brussels, Belgium. Pulling a Kalashnikov rifle from a black bag, he shot and killed four people– an Israeli couple, a French national waiting to enter the museum and a Belgian museum volunteer. He then nonchalantly walked away.

By the following Saturday, French authorities in Marseille had arrested 29-year-old Mehdi Nemmouche while performing a routine customs check at the local bus station. Nemmouche, who boarded the bus in Amsterdam, had recently returned to his native France from Syria, where he is believed to have fought alongside the extremist Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group.

The killings bear strong resemblance to a string of murders carried out by French-Algerian Mohammed Merah in Toulouse just two years ago. Nemmouche's calm demeanor after the shooting closely parallels that of Mohammed Bouyeri, the Dutch-Moroccan Muslim who stabbed and shot filmmaker Theo van Gogh on an Amsterdam street in 2004. And most notably, Nemmouche allegedly used a Kalashnikov, the weapon of choice among Western Muslims who join Syrian rebel forces. A Kalashnikov, along with another gun, and a video claiming credit for the murders, were found in Nemmouche's luggage at the time of his arrest.

The May 24 murders have brought long-overdue focus to the situation in Belgium, where radical Islam has long been spilling poison on its soil.

And the problem is not just about the strength of Sharia4Belgium, one of the strongest Sharia4 organizations seeking to install Sharia law in European countries; nor is it about the estimated 3000 European Muslims who have joined the Syrian rebels.

The problems began much earlier and have been growing more incendiary by the year. On the afternoon of 9/11/2001, for instance, controversial activist Dyab Abou Jahjah, a Lebanese-born Belgian with alleged ties to Hezbollah, celebrated the attacks on New York's World Trade Center with friends. Jahjah, who also founded the now nascent Arab-European League ("AEL"), a political group that sought to combine democracy with Sharia in Europe, described the day in his autobiography, writing: "We sat as if hypnotized by the radio, and heard that another plane was missing, maybe two. And that the Pentagon had been hit. We couldn't hold our joy, and laughed together."

Jahjah was arrested for inciting riots in 2002; in 2009, AEL protests in Antwerp's Jewish quarter left many Jews afraid to leave their homes. Soon after, he returned to his native Lebanon. This past January Jahjah made his way back to Belgium where he has been actively contributing to the political dialogue, engaging in debates and speeches and penning a column for De Standaard. At the same time, he continues to post veiled anti-Semitic remarks on his Twitter feed (@aboujahjah) and elsewhere.Yet little of this situation has been noted in the international press, even in discussing the attacks of May 24. No one seems to have noticed, say, the migration of Jews from Brussels' center as Muslim immigrants move in, or – more significantly – the increasing number of Jews who have emigrated to Israel, citing anti-Semitism at home. In fact, this development is true elsewhere in Europe as well, where, as the Deutsche Wirtschaft observed in 2011, "Particularly when Jews are recognizable, such as by wearing a yarmulke, they cannot show themselves in certain neighborhoods."

Little attention has been paid, either, to a 2013 European report in which Belgium scored the second highest percentage of anti-Semitic attacks, the majority, though not all, of which were at the hands of Muslims, and in which 88 percent of Belgian Jews said that anti-Semitism had increased greatly in the previous five years.This could explain why even top Belgian officials were woefully unprepared for what took place last Saturday at the museum; as former Brussels Police Commissioner Raphael Vandenbergh wrote me in an e-mail, "we never thought such a terrorist attack would be possible in Belgium."

That the accused is in fact French suggests, too, that the terror threat is in no way limited to Belgian borders – as the 2011 massacre of children in Toulouse already showed. Indeed, the French have had their share of threats, ranging from the fire-bombing of the offices of Charlie Hebdo in response to a published satirical cartoon, to the bombing of a kosher grocery just outside Paris. A year ago, members of a suspected Chechnyan terror cell were also arrested in various locations surrounding the French capital.

In fact, Nemmouche himself was on the French officials' radar, having been previously arrested for armed robbery, and because he was known to have fought alongside jihadist groups in Syria.

And yet, he still managed to enter Belgium, walk into a Jewish museum with guns, and use them.

There is an even more tragic irony to this story: just two days after the Belgian attacks – and a day after a similar attack in a town outside of Paris -- Dutch officials publicized a new report on local and European intelligence, showing that America's controversial PRISM eavesdropping program abroad – the one that has since been suspended after being leaked by former NSA employee Edward Snowden -- helped foil 26 terrorist attacks across Europe. Very possibly, that same program, were it not for Mr. Snowden, might have prevented the Brussels attack of May 24th. And the next one. And the next one, and the next - whoever may commit them. Wherever they may be.

Abigail R. Esman, the author, most recently, of Radical State: How Jihad Is Winning Over Democracy in the West (Praeger, 2010), is a freelance writer based in New York and the Netherlands.

A Kurdish man living in Malmö, Sweden was beaten and seriously injured this week by a gang of local Muslims who took offense at the Israeli flag displayed in his apartment window. ... Babak said that twice rocks were thrown through his windows. When he went down to the street after the last incident, he was confronted by at least 10 youths, most wielding iron rods and glass bottles. After demanding to know why he placed an Israeli flag in his window, the youths severely beat Babak.

...Muslims are not a minority. There are 1.5 billion Sunni Muslims worldwide, outweighing Catholics as the next largest religious faction at 1.1 billion and Hindus at 1 billion. They are still a minority of the overall population in Western countries, but a demographically trending majority.

In the UK more people attend mosques than the Church of England, that makes Muslims the largest functioning religious group there. Mohammed was the most popular baby name last year, ahead of Jack and Harry. In France, in this generation, more mosques have been built than Catholic churches and in southern France there are already more mosques than churches. Mohammed-Amine is the most popular double name, ahead of Jean-Baptiste, Pierre-Louis, Leo-Paul and Mohammed-Ali.

In Belgium, 50 percent of newborns are Muslim and empty Belgian churches are being turned into mosques. The most popular baby name is Mohammed and of the top 7 baby names, 6 were Muslim. A quarter of Amsterdam, Marseilles and Rotterdam and a fifth of Stockholm is already Muslim. The most popular baby name in Amsterdam, Utrecht, Rotterdam and The Hague is… Mohammed.

Europe’s Muslim population doubled in the last generation, and is set to double again. By 2025, (a decade and a half away), a third of all births in the EU will be Muslim

Like many girls her age, 15-year-old Moezdalifa El Adoui left her family's home on a summer afternoon without stopping to say goodbye. But unlike other teens, she wasn't going shopping or meeting friends downtown. The Dutch-Moroccan girl with the sweet warm smile was running away for Syria, to join in the jihad.

The moment they noticed she was gone, her parents phoned the police and her brother spread the word on Facebook. The next day, June 22, Moezdalifa was stopped at the airport in Dusseldorf, from where she planned to fly to Turkey and – like thousands of other European Muslims before her – to cross the border into Syria.

It is hard to imagine a 15-year-old girl, raised in the luxury and opportunity of Europe, running away to join an insurgency abroad, choosing to exchange friends and family for a life on the battlefield of a violent civil war. But over the past year, more and more underage European girls have headed off to Syria to take part in the Islamist uprising. Some go with boyfriends; others, like Moezdalifa, are lured by promises of a better life and lifelong romance once they arrive.

Indeed, according to Janny Groen, a reporter for Holland's Volkskrant, Moezdalifa was one of a group of several girls from the Netherlands all planning to make the trip.They were by no means the only ones: around the same time, for instance, 16-year-old twins Salma and Zahra Hulani slipped out of their parents' Manchester, England home in the middle of the night, also for Syria. And in April, Samra Kesinovic, 16, left home in Vienna with her friend Sabine Selimovic, aged 15. Austrian officials, reports the UK's Mail Online, now "believe that the pair are in a training camp and are not only already married, but also already living in the homes of their new husbands." Both girls, daughters of (Muslim) Bosnian refugees, were born and raised in Vienna.

All of these seem to be part of a new campaign by ISIS to recruit Western Muslims. "The self-proclaimed Islamic State, formerly known by the acronym ISIS, is actively recruiting Western women and girls," according to the Daily Beast. "And in the process this 'caliphate' that now occupies large swathes of Syria and Iraq is showing, once again, that it's almost as shrewd with social media as it is ruthless on the battlefield."

It is perhaps tempting to wave off such disappearances with a "you know how kids are," or observe that other kids in the 1960s, say, also ran off to join a "revolution" – usually to London or to Berkeley, Calif. But those girls were running away from a culture of war; these are running to its front lines. The first wanted peace, equality, universal love. These girls seek conquest. The children of the '60s imagined "no religion." The children of the jihad imagine only one.

Even so, much of what motivated '60s teens to join the hippie movement is still part of what stirs even underage Muslims in the West to join the extremists in Aleppo. Dutch adolescent psychiatrist Carla Rus, who specializes in treating Muslim girls, notes that their age makes them especially vulnerable to manipulation by recruiters. "They are already turning, because of puberty, against their parents and their society," she observed in a recent e-mail. "Some of them may also be smitten with a jihadist boy, and easily sucked in by his ideology and ideas. Or they may have problems at home, where they get little attention."

Problems at home can be a particularly influential factor for Muslim girls, who are frequently overlooked by their parents in homes where sons are king and where they are often repressed by parents and by brothers. The girls' urge to break free from their families, coupled with a defiant attitude ("I'll show them") and a wish to prove themselves as worthy also make them easy prey for recruiters – many of whom they encounter in local mosques (as the Austrian girls did) or online.

In Moezdalifa's case, one of her friends told Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad, the contact came through Facebook, where two Muslim women from Belgium assured her that, "In Syria she could have a perfect life and get married." Others are specifically targeted by young men around their own age, like 18-year-old Dutch-Moroccan Oussama C, alias Abou Yazeed, who was arrested in June in The Hague just days before Mouzdalifa disappeared.

And ISIS jihadists reportedly have recently released English-language videos aimed at encouraging Westerners to join them. "All my brothers, come to jihad," says one, according to an NBC News report. "Feel the honor we are feeling, feel the happiness that we are feeling." A similar video, created in Dutch, received 57,000 hits in its first day.

Tragically, Muslim parents in the West have been sounding the alarm for well over a year now, warning of recruiters targeting underage youth. In the Netherlands, at least one father filed suit against the Dutch intelligence agency for failing to address the problem.

Now, with a reported 3,000 Europeans having joined Syrian jihadist groups, officials are cracking down. Dual Dutch citizens can lose their Dutch passports, for instance; and in early July, EU leaders announced a "confidential action plan" to address the problem, with measures that include passport confiscation and international arrest warrants.But for girls like the Halane sisters, you have to ask yourself if this is really the right answer. What happens when reality reaches these girls, when the thrill and the romance are over, and they find themselves trapped in a marriage to a Muslim extremist, living in a foreign land, subjected to the violent oppression of Sharia law?

Arguably, as dual citizens, such girls still have someplace to go, but most carry passports for Turkey or Morocco, where conditions are deteriorating – especially for women. And how do you tell a child of 15 that she can never come back home, just because she believed in something that turned out to be a lie? Do we refuse these young girls – and their future daughters –because they may pose a danger to the West, or provide the safe haven they (inevitably) will need?

(Marc: Life is tough. It is tougher when you are stupid.)

These are questions we have never had to face with any other war, but as the Syrian battles keep raging, and as Western girls continue to join Syria's Islamic jihad, they are questions to which we will soon, urgently, need to find the answers.

Abigail R. Esman, the author, most recently, of Radical State: How Jihad Is Winning Over Democracy in the West (Praeger, 2010), is a freelance writer based in New York and the Netherlands.

Italy has ramped up its security in the wake of some Rome media reports that Islamic State terrorists have set their sights on Pope Francis and threatened to do him harm because of his rally call for the world to subdue the group.

Il Tempo published a report that said the pope is “in the crosshairs” of the Islamic State for “bearing false witness” against Islam — a charge that carries severe punishment and even death.

The newspaper cited anonymous sources among Italy’s intelligence agencies and reported the nation has gone on heightened alert.

The paper also reported that the Islamic State apparently has plans to raise “the level of confrontation” with Europe, Italy and the pope, called the “greatest exponent of the Christian religions,” the Daily Beast reported.

Yet Italy’s Deputy Interior Minister Filippo Bubbico said both the nation and the Vatican face equal risk, and government officials have issued a terrorism alert, the Daily Beast reported.

The alert warns that the Islamic State is looking to attack “sensitive targets” both in and out of Rome, including embassies, Catholic churches, bus and train stations, airports and the like. And officials have put in place flight restrictions over Vatican City and over Italy’s foreign ministry, the Daily Beast reported.

The Swedish police has released a map of 55 areas where they publicly admit to having surrendered control to the criminal gangs. The report describes outright attacks on police officers trying to enter the areas, which is a step up from the previous problem with attacks on mailmen, fire trucks, ambulances and similar services; it used to be that fire trucks and ambulances had to wait for police escort to enter the areas, but now the police themselves need protection.

October 28, 2014 at 16:49, Updated: October 29, 2014 at 21:37 The number of residential areas in Sweden where the police can not maintain law and order now totals 55. National Criminal Intelligence Section has identified the geographic areas where local criminal networks is considered to have a major negative impact on the environment. There are areas where bargains among criminals can result in gunfire on the streets, where residents do not dare to testify and where the police are not welcome.

The report "A national survey of criminal networks with major impact in the local community" was published last week. It describes areas where "unattended police cars are attacked," where police officers will be "attacked" and where it is "common for police officers exposed to violence and threats." Traders suffer from vandalism, burglary, robbery and extortion. Drug Sales are open, and although not the gangs control the territory "occurs checks on vehicles" in the battle over the drug market.

The police do not want to talk about parallel societies, but in some areas experiencing residents to "ordinary justice system to some extent eliminated", while police notes that "a wider clientele turn to the criminal justice environment." The residents believe "that it is the criminals who control the areas."

It is about famous places Rinkeby / Tensta and Alby / Fittja in Stockholm, Bergsjön and the Bishop's Palace in Gothenburg and manor / Rosengård in Malmö, but also about Copper farm in Landskrona, Araby in Växjö and brown in Gavle, to name just a few. On these 55 locations, the police have little power to curb crime. Police Call-out services are greeted by stone-throwing and investigations is difficult because people do not want to testify, for now even the crimes reported.

The police do not use the term "no go" zones. It is originally military slang for rebel-controlled areas. But the question is whether there is a clearer description of the places where "the public in several cases, understands that it is the criminals that control in the areas" and where "the police are not able to fulfill its task."

Police are talking about older gangs and younger, with the former work more professional and structured, while the latter as soon as is loosely connected networks, '' mayflies' that comes and goes in different configurations "where the common denominator is the social context and the geographical area .

They established gangs - which are held together by "ethnicity, kinship or friendship" - can probably be countered with targeted efforts against organized crime, while the younger ones can hardly be achieved without broad approaches in the local community. Police are now investigating whether overlap with those the government deemed as "exclusion areas", to possibly identify socioeconomic and other factors behind the development.

And, of course, plays the role of exclusion. But it may be worth recalling that many so-called exclusion areas do not seem to have lapsed into lawlessness, and that the vast majority of people in isolation rather victims than perpetrators. The 55 identified areas need first and foremost safety and security. Only then can the fields evolve in a positive direction. We need a permanent police presence - well staffed police stations - to remove criminals from the streets and to regain control of the areas.

Apparently the publication in question was part of the Mohammed cartoon brouhaha in 2006 and until a few days ago had 24/7 protection. The hit took place at the time of a meeting when pretty much everyone would be there.

Apparently the publication in question was part of the Mohammed cartoon brouhaha in 2006 and until a few days ago had 24/7 protection. The hit took place at the time of a meeting when pretty much everyone would be there.

Apparently the publication in question was part of the Mohammed cartoon brouhaha in 2006 and until a few days ago had 24/7 protection. The hit took place at the time of a meeting when pretty much everyone would be there.

Looks like well trained,well planned attack.

Hope everyone in the US and Europe stays safe.

Logged

Do not fear going anywhere, nor doing anything. You will die where you are supposed to.

Apparently the publication in question was part of the Mohammed cartoon brouhaha in 2006 and until a few days ago had 24/7 protection. The hit took place at the time of a meeting when pretty much everyone would be there.

Looks like well trained,well planned attack.

Hope everyone in the US and Europe stays safe.

Hard to when there is a global war on and most people in the west want to pretend it isn't happening.